I realize that this topic is targeted to an extremely small audience. My main reason for covering this is because it's not very well documented. In fact, the tarball I got from the corporate office had no documentation at all. Furthermore, my searches around the Internet turned up next to nothing on the subject -- most posts I found stated that it just wasn't possible. This is simply not true, and as proof, I've been using it for a couple weeks on multiple machines.
One little issue here: normally I would link to the installation tarball I've used. I'm even more inclined to do so since many corporate IT departments will issue a canned "we will not support Linux" response to any requests for the Linux client. Moreover, I've been unable to find many sources for it. At this point, I am uncertain of the legality in re-posting the tarball that I've used, so I'm holding out on doing so until I can find out one way or the other. In the meantime, I can promise you that Aventail includes this client as part of their standard distribution, so your corporate IT department does have it. Keep pestering them, and chances are that someone will send it to you just to shut you up. (But if you do happen to get it this way, be warned that you are completely on your own.)
If this fails, I have found a few links that might be of use. The first is, so far as I can tell, a direct link to the same version I've used, so I suggest trying that first. The rest are sites that list various versions of the Aventail Connect client, but I've not tried to download/install from them, so your mileage may vary:
I'm using version 8.90 because that's the version that was provided by our corporate IT department and is guaranteed to work with our hardware. I'm aware that 9.x and 10.x versions are available, but I've not used them. I would presume that the setup wouldn't be very different for these versions, and a quick scouring of various forums seems to support that thought.
When installing under Ubuntu, understand that the install and startup scripts are not written for your default shell. (Yes, this means we'll be doing a little work from the command prompt. But don't worry ... it's quite painless.)
First thing, copy the tarball into a working directory and decompress it. (I'll assume you can copy a file into another directory.) Once copied, open your terminal window, decompress, substituting the filename for whatever you might have.
tar -xvf AventailConnect-Linux.tar
Now that we've done the hard part, you'll need to make a quick tweak to the installation script. Remember, it's not written for bash, the default Ubuntu shell. When dealing with quick and dirty text editing, I prefer vim. If memory serves, vim isn't installed during the default Ubuntu setup, so we'll have to add that real quick. It's easy enough to install:
sudo apt-get install vim
The next thing we need to do is get the install script set up to work under Ubuntu. Let's open it for editing:
sudo vim install.sh
For the uninitiated, vim opens files in a view-only mode. To begin editing, you'll have to press the letter i to enter insert mode. From there, we make one tiny change. Edit the first line:
#!/bin/sh
to read:
#!/bin/bash
When you're done making changes, press [esc] to return to view mode, then enter the following:
:wq
The colon enters command mode. The w tells vim to write your changes to disk, and the q exits the editor.
Now we can run the installation script:
sudo ./install.sh
One little note: in one instance (I've done this quite a few times), I had to use sudo bash ./install.sh -- and I don't know why or what caused it. If the script won't run, saying there's an error with a function on line 22 or something around there, try this same tip and see if it works for you. The last few times I tried the install, I didn't need to do this, but I'm including it just in case.
Once the install script finishes, you'll have to make the same shell change to the startup script. Aventail installs to /usr/local/Aventail, so switch to that directory.
cd /usr/local/Aventail
Once there, let's open the file for editing:
sudo vim startct.sh
Change the first line from:
#!/bin/sh
to:
#!/bin/bash
Then save and exit with:
:wq
Next, we need to make sure that the startup script can be run without root privileges, so let's change that now:
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/Aventail/startct.sh
If all went well, you should now be ready to connect to your corporate network. From the command prompt, simply type:
/usr/local/Aventail/startct.sh
The startup script will prompt you for the appliance host/IP address. Note that under Windows clients, this is usually automatically provided in the form of a configuration file, so you may not know it. If you don't know this address, contact your IT department. Alternatively, if you have access to a Windows-based install, the address can be found in the networking section as one of the connections. Right click, select properties, and check the connection info.
Enter the IP or hostname of your Aventail gateway, then follow the remainder of the prompts as you would under a Windows connection.
That's it! You're in!
When you're finished with your work and want to disconnect from your corporate network, enter the following at your command prompt:
/usr/local/Aventail/stopct
Hopefully you have as much success as I did. If you have anything to add, or noticed any errors with this, I'm very interested in your comments. There's a glaring lack of documentation on this particular topic, and I have no problem at all with helping fill this void.
